Vorstman's Guideto the birds of the Andes and West Coast

All species › Passerines › Ovenbirds and woodcreepers

Ovenbirds and woodcreepers | Furnariidae

Ovenvogels en muisspechten | Horneros y trepatroncos | Ovenbirds and woodcreepers

A large family of tropical American suboscines, with two hundred and sixteen species in sixty genera in this guide, from dry forest and rainforest through cloud forest to páramo, puna and rocky coasts. The birds are mostly brown, rufous and cinnamon, often streaked or spotted, and the sexes look alike. Broadly they fall into two groups. The woodcreepers climb tree trunks like woodpeckers, supported by a tail with stiff, bare shaft tips, and use a straight or strongly curved bill to probe bark crevices, moss and epiphytes for insects and spiders; some follow army ant swarms to catch the animals fleeing ahead of them. The remaining species, such as leaftossers, foliage-gleaners, xenops, spinetails and canasteros, find their food by tossing leaf litter, searching dead leaves or clambering through foliage and scrub; in the open high mountains miners, earthcreepers and cinclodes walk on the ground, and cinclodes also forage along streams and on the rocky shore. The voice consists of rattles, trills and shrill series. Nesting habits vary widely: woodcreepers nest in tree cavities on a layer of bark flakes, others dig tunnels in earth banks, horneros of the genus Furnarius build an oven-shaped nest of mud, and spinetails build large, enclosed stick nests with a tubular entrance. The eggs are mostly white.

Native species 212 species

Species that occur here by nature: breeding birds, winter visitors and passage migrants. They are arranged by genus, in the sequence of the list.

Ochetorhynchus 2 species

Nasica 1 species

Campylorhamphus 3 species

Coryphistera 1 species

Microxenops 1 species

Premnoplex 1 species

Lepidocolaptes 7 species

Margarornis 2 species

Berlepschia 1 species

Furnarius 6 species

Xenerpestes 2 species

Neophilydor 2 species

Sittasomus 1 species

Dendroplex 2 species

Anabazenops 1 species

Mazaria 1 species

Drymotoxeres 1 species

Phleocryptes 1 species

Phacellodomus 7 species

Dendrocolaptes 3 species

Certhiasomus 1 species

Pseudasthenes 1 species

Premnornis 1 species

Geocerthia 1 species

Sclerurus 6 species

Upucerthia 3 species

Clibanornis 3 species

Deconychura 3 species

Tarphonomus 2 species

Lochmias 1 species

Dendroma 2 species

Metopothrix 1 species

Thripophaga 3 species

Syndactyla 5 species

Synallaxis 26 species

Certhiaxis 2 species

Hellmayrea 1 species

Cranioleuca 14 species

Pseudocolaptes 2 species

Pseudoseisura 2 species

Philydor 1 species

Leptasthenura 6 species

Cinclodes 7 species

Ancistrops 1 species

Automolus 5 species

Xiphocolaptes 2 species

Drymornis 1 species

Xenops 4 species

Glyphorynchus 1 species

Geositta 9 species

Asthenes 22 species

Hylexetastes 1 species

Anabacerthia 3 species

Thripadectes 6 species

Xiphorhynchus 9 species

Dendrexetastes 1 species

Sylviorthorhynchus 1 species

Siptornis 1 species

Dendrocincla 4 species

Schoeniophylax 1 species

Vagrants 4 species

Birds blown in from other continents. They have no range here, and so no distribution map.